DECEMBER 27

Riley started the day by making sure she had a coherent schedule to make sure that everything was packed and taken care of so that they could leave without any fuss. Later she went to her special place so that she could relax when things inevitably went wrong. Emma thought that after two and a half days Ruth would be used to the pet chihuahua and they could play with him. She thought wrong, and had to fulsomely apologize when Ruth still wasn't comfortable with dogs. A couple of weeks ago Mathilda had first heard of the idea of hide and seek, and a stray remark from her grandfather led her to think they were playing it. So Ben had to spend twenty minutes trying to find her. Riley nervously wondered whether Mathilda might have hidden in such a way as to maim herself or worse. Mrs. Perrin thought that threatening her toys might be a good idea, but Ben dissuaded her. As it happened, it was her gentle coaxing that finally got Mathilda to emerge from her ingenious and not at all dangerous hiding place.

Since Mr. Perrin's car only had four seats, the idea was that he would drive Riley, Emma and Ruth to the metro station. Then, Mr. Perrin would go back, and pick up Ben and Mathilda. This involved finding a child's car seat in the garage, which took some time. It also involved some interruptions as Mr. Perrin had to take some calls. Meanwhile Ben and Riley went over the gifts they all had gotten and tried to check them off. But there were delays: Emma had in fact written her thank you letters, but had forgotten where she put them. In the course of finding them, Ben and Riley also found gifts which, it turned out, had not been properly packed. As Ben walked down the stairs having solved this latest problem he noticed Mrs. Perrin in her study on her laptop. She had been chatting with Rebecca. "Ben, I'd like to talk to you."

"Sure, Mrs. Perrin. What about?"

"We've had a nice Christmas, but I can't help notice a certain tension between us. I know we haven't had the most open or warm relationship. And it could be said that I'm not the warmest of people..." Just then Riley walked by. "Oh Riley come in. This concerns you too. And close the door behind you: your children don't need to hear this." Riley did so. "Now everyone knows I haven't been the most indulgent of parents towards you. We're not like the Gilmore girls, nor should we be. And I don't believe in being effusive and sentimental. But I feel that something has been left unsaid, and I don't think I've said this enough." Riley brightened as she waited for the compliment. "Look at me having trouble getting the words out. I'm being silly. But here goes. Riley, I need to tell you this. Your husband is, all things considered, surprisingly adequate."

"Adequate?"

"Relatively so. Let's not go overboard on this."

"Adequate!?"

"I mean, when I learned that you still had a crush on him and there was a serious chance that you wanted to devote the rest of your life to raising his bastard daughter, I thought 'God, my daughter's a sucker.' And there's no question that marrying Ben is a major lapse in judgement on your part. He clearly was lazy and aimless in school, and how he's just a mediocre bartender. But on the other hand, how much can we reasonably expect for you Riley? Fitch, obviously, was completely out of your league. And not only would it be wrong to be sleeping with your boss, but you would never have been able to pull off such an awkward relationship. And Danny would have grown out of his seven year self and realized how irritating you can be. Philip was nice. He was cultured and literate and you would have to work hard to keep him. And you would spend your time around university professors and learned to read more books. Yes, Philip really would have been the best for you. It's such a pity that you were too stupid to keep him. Poor Philip...what was I talking about again?"

"You said you were going to say something nice about Ben, but then decided to insult the two of us."

"There's no need to be rude Riley. Now I remember. Ben is clearly adequate. He's rarely the drunken buffoon he so often was as a teenager. And Ruth and Matty seem fairly agreeable. Of course when they grow up you'll have to watch them very carefully so they don't take after their sluttish paternal grandmother. Do you know the best thing about you Ben? Although you're flippant and irritating in many ways, you do realize that you'll never do better than Riley. In many ways that's as good or better than actually loving her. And you are genuinely nice to your children. They're not half as stupid as I thought they might be."

Mrs. Perrin then waved the two out of her study. "Well, that wasn't quite the epiphany we were looking for." Ben commented. Riley grimaced and muttered through clenched teeth "I'm going to sit in the car if anyone needs me."

But that was easier said than done. For a start, it was distinctly colder than the day before, and Mr. Perrin didn't want to waste gas or damage the environment keeping the car on. Then Ruth joined her mother in the car and they had a few chilly minutes of mother-daughter bonding when Ruth realized she had to go to the bathroom. And there were more delays on Mr. Perrin's part. And to top all this, after more than a week of being good Mathilda went into one of her crying fits. Ben managed to calm her down to get her to explain why. It turned out that she was crying because her crying was making everyone else unhappy. Riley returned to the house and paced waiting for all the little snags to finally resolve themselves. But as she was walking past the study door she found Mrs. Perrin crying.

"Mom, what's wrong?"

"This is just like you Riley. It's just like you to gloat."

"Excuse me?"

"You're going to make the obvious point. I devoted all my love to my real daughter and she acts selfishly and betrays me. While the daughter who isn't my real daughter constantly tries to get my love and shows she's the better daughter. You're going to remind of that. Or you're going to be especially and ostentatiously forgiving and that's going to make me feel even worse. That's so like you Riley!"

Riley was about to ask what had brought this on when Ben walked by. "What's wrong Mrs. Perrin?"

"It's Rebecca," and she started crying again. Slightly recovering, "Remember the locket I told you about? Rebecca told me earlier today that she had finally tracked it down and that it would be here for New Year's. But she was lying."

"What?"

"It turned out that she bought the locket in New Haven. Then she realized it was valuable, sold it on E-Bay and has been searching for a cheap substitute. That was what she was going to send to me. She boasted it to a friend and didn't realize that I could overhear her on Skype."

"Wow," Riley softly said.

"Ben, where are the girls? I don't want them to listen to what I want to say next." Ben turned to the girls who were in the kitchen. "Emma, Ruth, in the basement there are some of your mother's and aunt's children books. Why don't you take Mathilda downstairs and show them to her. We're going to be here a few minutes." Once they left, Mrs. Perrin resumed. "Riley, have you ever wondered about my wedding?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well you all know that Bonnie Wheeler had a shotgun wedding and had Danny on her 18th birthday. You were born a year later. I'm only a couple of years older than Bonnie. And I'm not white trash like her..."

"Umm, her son is right in front of you." Ben pointed out.

Mrs. Perrin ignored him. "...and me and your father were attending university. Didn't it strike you as strange that we got married at 20. That's much younger than college educated upper middle class women of my generation."

"Actually Mom I did think about it when I was 15. I saw some wedding photos and I thought you looked a little pudgy. So I thought you got married because you were pregnant with me. But all the records, the announcement in the paper, the wedding souvenirs all made it clear that the wedding took place exactly when everyone said it was. And all the other records made it clear that I was born eleven months later. And later I learned that Aunt Margot was my actual mother. So I thought you just got married unusually young."

Mrs. Perrin summoned deep reserves of strength. "I got pregnant three months before the wedding. We arranged everything very quickly. I felt extremely guilty for what I had done. I also hated myself for being so stupid. And I knew that everyone was gossiping right behind my back. And the thought that they were, that a cheap slut like Bonnie Lyle could be laughing at me..."

"Again, her son is still right in front of you." Ben reminded her.

"...was more than I could bear. I wished that somehow, someway it would go all away. And then six days before the wedding, I had a miscarriage."

There was a silence. "It was a miscarriage. I had done nothing to induce it. Your father, bless him, said it didn't change anything, and we went ahead with the wedding. But now I felt incredibly guilty. And to make things worse, as we spent our wedding night in the hospital because of complications, my gynecologist said we could never have any more children."

Both Ben and Riley were stunned, and Mrs. Perrin immediately realized they had got the wrong impression. "Oh, he was an idiot. It turned out that I could have children. Rebecca is certainly my daughter Riley. You remember me going to the hospital to have her. But anyway, when I got married, I felt I had thrown away my one chance to be a mother with my selfish wish. So when a few months later I learned that Margot was pregnant with you and we wondered about the alternatives, the possibility that you could be the daughter I should have had was too perfect to pass up."

Mrs. Perrin sighed. "And for the first year of your life Riley things went well. I mean you cried a lot and it drove me crazy. And I was even more determined to finish my college degree. That was very time consuming, there was a lot of pressure. And the more pressure there was, the more I hated Margot. I mean I didn't hate her, but I despised her because she was lazy, she didn't use her full potential, she was irresponsible, she didn't appreciate the sacrifices my parents made to hide her pregnancy so people would think I was the mother. She was supposed to breast feed you for the first few months and she was especially unhelpful in being around to do that. And I was really angry when she confided to me that she didn't actually know for sure who your father was.

"It was a couple of years later, after I had graduated, that motherhood started to curdle. Once Margot left and floated through the rest of her life without responsibilities, I wanted to advance and become the professional I could be. But I couldn't, because the jobs I wanted didn't accommodate mothers with young children. So I had to do part-time work and other things to help the family. And I was very good at it and made a reasonable amount of money. But not half as much money if I didn't have you. It was one thing to make these sacrifices later for my own daughter. But to make them for my sister's bastard at times filled me with rage.

"And the worst thing..." and now Mrs. Perrin started to weep again, "...was when I would look at your two old your self in what was still a sort of crib and sometimes I would see the cutest little angel. But then I would get up at night and I would look you at you whining and then I'd think, my daughter is dead. And this horrible little cuckoo had taken her place." And she burst out crying. But she still managed to talk. "And every time I thought I saw Margot in you, I stamped it out. I couldn't stand the thought that after all I had done, I would end up with another her, mocking me and all the hard work I put in you. I even fed you more so you'd be fat and you couldn't be as slutty as your aunt."

Not only was she still crying, but she couldn't look at the two of them. "So now you're going to tell me I'm a horrible mother, and I deserve having my birth daughter betrayed me. Or you're going to ostentatiously forgive me, just to remind me that I'm a horrible person. Or you're just going to do nothing and let me stew in your own guilt." And now she couldn't stop crying.

Well this is awkward, Ben thought. Riley really needed her mother to tell her she admires and respects her. And instead she's the one having a meltdown. Ben took a deep breath and emptied his mind. Then he spoke. "Mrs. Perrin, I know you don't admire me or even respect me. But if it's any consolation, nobody thinks Riley is remotely like her Aunt Margot. And not simply because you've done an incredibly good job making sure no one finds out. You have made Riley Perrin the woman she is today, and you have made her the woman that her family and friends love. And that matters more to me than almost anything."

"Almost anything?" snapped Mrs. Perrin, who had stopped sobbing.

"I do have three daughters. They're also incredibly important. I know you wish for better things for Riley, things I can't provide. But I am very grateful for Riley, and for that I thank you."

There was a silence. Then Mrs. Perrin took some Kleenex, wiped her eyes and generally composed herself. Then she stood up and looked at Ben. She almost smiled, and thought of hugging him. Then she though against it, and just shook his hand. "You're welcome." Should I tell him that I know Riley loves him and would never leave him? No, he'd just get complacent. I'll wait till their 20th wedding anniversary. No. Make it their 25th. She then turned to her daughter and embraced her. "Have a good New Year."

"I love you Mom."

"Of course you do. You're a good girl." And then an idea came to Mrs. Perrin, one that would come into fruition nearly seven years later at a very special occasion for Riley indeed when her mother presented her with the real locket, right in front of her embarrassed sister.

Soon, Riley was off in the car with Ruth and Emma and Ben was getting Mathilda ready to go. Mrs. Perrin watched him doing so. "Where are those stuffed toys you carry with you everywhere?"

"In the car." She was holding the bottle of soap bubble liquid. "Me Grandma, can I blow some bubbles?"

"Of course you can." And Ben unscrewed the top and Mathilda blew some bubbles in the vestibule. Soon Mr. Perrin was back and was putting the child car seat in. "I love you Me Grandma!" said Mathilda as she hugged Mrs. Perrin.

Tears came to Mrs. Perrin's eyes. "I love you too." Ben regretted that Riley wasn't here to see this, but he had the foresight to record this scene with his phone. Soon he and Mathilda rejoined the others outside the bank where Riley had used their Christmas poker winnings to pay off their credit card debt. Everyone thanked Mr. Perrin and there were several hugs before he drove away. Just before they went to the Metro with their luggage, Riley rested her head on Ben's shoulder. He held her and kissed her above her ear. The new year would be a better one.